PokerStars Festival Marbella: The fight for a final table spot begins

Us reporters like to pigeonhole different days of a poker tournament, it helps liven things up after years of reporting on them. So with that in mind, if Day 1 is as much about survival as accumulation and Day 2 is moving day - where a stack to make a deep run at a four day tournament is built, then what of Day 3?

Day 3 is all about the final table, which confusingly doesn't happen on Day 3. It's about it in the sense that it's at this stage of a tournament where we think the players - or at least some of time - start to think that, you know what I could final table this thing.

By this stage the hundreds of entrants have been reduced to double figures - 76 players returned for Day 3 - and you can actually see everyone in the tournament from where you're sat. It doesn't take too long for the numbers to start to shrink and well, with 45 players left you're basically playing a five table sit and go aren't you?

Thomas is top of the chip charts

Of course all the above is just conjecture, but what we do know is that Thomas De Rooij is the chip leader at start of play. He bagged up 1,109,000 to lead the way and was the only player to break the million chip mark. Fares Shehadeh gave it a good go but finished on 981,000. If the chip leaders look over their shoulders - or around the room - they'll see plenty of sharks circling. De Melo, Wigg, Malec, Geilich, Schuman, Viega. They're all still in and they've been there and got the t-shirt.